little

bunnies. music. i baked a pie.

at the moment, little bunny has a box in his house. he sits on it, all day long, content, staring at the wall.  the lid of his house will be open - he'll jump out, only to run straight back in, back onto the box... sitting there a bit more. 

 

oh little man, scruffy little face and snuffle nose... 

the thing i find interesting about so much debate about Tao Lin's poetry is that people keep asking 'is it poetry?' (a post on HTMLgiant ... HERE) - it seems a sort of empty question to me. what is poetry? what is art? what is writing? these are not interesting questions, because the point is not the word. the point is what it is.  how does it make you feel? why do you like his writing or dislike it? what do you like or dislike about it?  most importantly, if you don't think it is poetry, why not? what makes it not poetry? what would make it poetry?  should they be read individually? as a whole?  how does this change what is written?  or how you read it?  

personally, i love them. they are gentle and small, and use gentle small words. they crawl into your mind, and over your body, and all of a sudden, you are thinking about vegan shoplifting hamsters, and you feel enchanted and disenchanted at the same time.  i don't know if i enjoy them the most out of all poetry i've read recently - Carol Ann Duffy resonates more, moves me more. but the subtly of the colouring of boredom, solitude, confusion, the breakdown of a relationship, sitting on gmail chat talking shit for hours rather than doing anything, eating vegan food to be moral, and... what i best call ennui, is what he paints so well, and it is when you read a collection of them that they creep up on you.

my monologue after reading maybe 30, 40 pages of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Poetry starts to slow down, and stutter along blank lines. it observes and sinks into my brain.   and the words empty out of what you see.  it is a day to day observation.  it is a step from one foot to the next, point by point.  and i like that, and i don't see why that isn't poetry, or why it can't be.